BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbia ’s protesting university students are gearing up this weekend for their first big rally of the year, in a renewed push for major political changes in the Balkan country run by the authoritarian President Aleksandar Vucic.
Thousands of people are expected to gather on Saturday from all over Serbia in the capital, Belgrade.
Serbia's youth movement was behind a wave of mass anti-corruption street protests that shook Vucic
last year. Now, students say their sights are set on approaching elections later this year or next that they hope would oust Vucic's right-wing populist government.
“We hope a lot of people will come and spend the day with us, and then continue to support the students because we are preparing for the elections,” youth representative Isidora Jovanovic told The Associated Press. “Serbia needs a change, and students will bring that change.”
The venue on Saturday will be Belgrade’s Slavija Square, the scene of a huge anti-government protest last March. That rally ended in a sudden disruption that experts later said — and the government denied — involved the use of a sonic weapon against peaceful demonstrators.
Police at the square on Tuesday separated Vucic's loyalists from the students who were printing their “Students win” slogans. Days earlier, an elderly man was injured when a driver broke up a traffic blockade in central Belgrade.
A number of other incidents have taken place in previous months, including violence that marred a local election in March.
Jovanovic said organizers will do all they can to make sure there are no incidents, especially because a lot of people will come from across Serbia. The students ”don’t want any of them (citizens) to leave with a bad feeling or injuries.”
Launched in response to a train station tragedy that killed 16 people in northern Serbia in November 2024, the student movement blocked faculties for months in 2025, forcing the resignation of then-Prime Minister Milos Vucevic and his government.
The protesters said that wasn’t enough, and demanded early elections, which Vucic has not called yet.
The quest for accountability over the concrete canopy crash at the Novi Sad station resonated widely among the public because many believed the tragedy was the result of deeply rooted corruption and negligence in state infrastructure projects.
Dusan Vucicevic, a professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences, said the youth movement has since grown into a political player backed by a large number of people. Students, he said, can count on an “excellent result” in a future ballot.
“We finally have a political group that can challenge the (ruling) Serbian Progressive Party and Aleksandar Vucic,” Vucicevic told the AP.
Vucic has pushed hard against the protesters. Pro-government media have branded his critics as terrorists and foreign agents who wish to destroy the country — a rhetoric that has ramped up political divisions.
The president's loyalists will likely on Saturday fill a park camp outside the presidency building that he set up last March, apparently as a shield against protesters. Several attacks on protesters and journalists were reported around the camp in the past.
Reports of police use of excessive force and arbitrary detentions of protesters have sparked international scrutiny. Serbia’s democratic backsliding could cost the country around 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion) in European Union funding for membership candidate nations.
Branislav Vasic and Filip Novakovic, freshmen at Belgrade's Faculty of Political Sciences, told the AP they too will be at the rally on Saturday. The 19-year-olds said joining their older colleagues in protests is an imperative.
“Everyone should go to the rally out of principle because of the situation,” Vasic said. He is convinced that ”there is the strength for change as long as people want it.”
Novakovic believes that “we are together in this, one step away from a better future.” This generation, he said, has a historic chance to carry out the changes previous generations could not.
“I will keep trying as long as I live, he said. ”This struggle is a long one.”
